PURAN Brothers Disposal Services is in the shredding business – disposing confidential documents, old tyres, and the like – but the budding oil and gas industry has led the company to research how practical the use of a tote shredder would be.

The company has found that it would be a useful method to assist oil companies to dispose of totes, which are essentially bulk containers that are used for storing or transporting liquid substances.

Although some folks might be tempted to reuse the totes for storing water or something else, the companies do not generally promote this practice as unsafe, or even harmful chemicals, may still be in the containers.

“With our oil and gas industry in Guyana, we realised that some companies have been asking us if we know how to dispose of totes, and we noticed a lot of them have been piling up,” Assistant General Manager, Kishan Puran, told Guyana Chronicle on Tuesday.

Because they’d opt not to give away the totes, and because there’s no resale value for them locally, the companies have been stacking them up in hopes of exporting them, perhaps for recycling purposes.

“We noticed that there was a demand for how these companies can dispose of them so we decided to bring in a shredder,” Puran reflected. The machine should be in the country within the next two weeks so that the company can begin offering this brand-new service to the public.

In the meantime, it has been assisting firms to dispose of documents that they ought to get rid of after a certain period of time, as required by authorities.

“We also identified a problem with tyres in Guyana. There was no practical solution, so we decided to import a tyre shredder. Because of the amount of tyres that take up the landfill, it’s very bulky… and burying them is also not effective,” Puran detailed.

As for the tote shredder, he explained that it will not just shred the plastic of the totes, but will also be able to shred the metal.

“There is a restriction that no one is supposed to use the totes but you know as Guyanese, they might want to use them to store something; that can be harmful. Some of them might have stored chemicals which may not be safe. So that’s why we came up with the idea of bringing in the tote shredder,” Puran shared.

With the country’s economic situation looking up, he said they are continually looking to see how they can expand the services being offered by the company.

“Things look very promising. We have opportunities to invest today rather than later so that we can be one of the first players in the market for certain services.”

Speaking about the diversity that is evident in the company, Puran pointed out: “We’re into ready mix, liquid waste disposal, construction, toilet and tent rentals; we are still trying to see what other areas we can get into. We also have our sandpit coming up very soon. We will be bringing the sand from our sandpit in Essequibo and using it for our internal projects; we will also be reselling.”

Meanwhile, at the recent International Energy Conference and Expo, where the company had a booth, Head of the Health and Safety Department, Jason Carter, had shared that the new shedding service would be of particular benefit to the oil companies.

“The totes that they bring their chemicals in are hard to get rid of; they try to destroy them. Doing so has been a challenge for the oil companies, but now we are bringing in shredders,” he said.